Spread Betting Basics
Do all sports games have sides of equal strength? Of course not! Do you still want to bet on them? Of course you do! That’s why sites offer a kind of action called spread betting.
Spread betting was invented in America in the 1940s. It gained worldwide popularity in the 1980s. It’s offered on every major sportsbook online, including Pinnacle, SBOBet, and Betfair.
In fixed-odds betting, you’ll bet on one team to win or lose, with the odds varying based on which team the bookie and the public perceive as stronger. With fixed-odds betting, the odds can be very long and very short, meaning you’ll either have to bet on a team that’s not likely to win, or bet a lot on a team that’s likely to win, for little gain. Fixed-odds betting has more variance than spread betting, and because the odds are always different and subject to change, sportsbooks can get away with charging slightly more vig, decreasing your chances at long-term profitability. In spread betting, you’ll bet on a team to win (or not lose) by a certain amount, called the margin of victory. Spread bets will be presented like this: New Orleans Saints −7.5 Indianapolis Colts +7.5 The number to the right of each team is called the handicap, or the line. Spread betting pretends that Indianapolis starts the game with 7.5 points, or New Orleans starts the game with −7.5 points, to even the odds that either team will win. The odds often won’t be listed, because the outcomes — New Orleans winning by 8 or more, or Indianapolis winning or losing by 7 or less — are supposed to be equal. They aren’t actually equal, though, which is where you, as a sports bettor, can profit. (If this game only offered fixed-odds betting, you would have to risk a lot to win a large amount from New Orleans, and Indianapolis wouldn’t be likely to win. Spread betting is a way of minimizing this risk.) Let’s say you bet on New Orleans −7.5, and the full-time score is New Orleans 24-17 Indianapolis. Since Indianapolis started with 7.5 points, their final total is 17 + 7.5 = 24.5, which is greater than New Orleans’ 24. In this case, New Orleans has failed to cover. Indianapolis wins, and you lose the bet. (Had you bet on Indianapolis, you’d win the bet, even though your team lost!) If the full-time score is New Orleans 25-17 Indianapolis, then New Orleans wins 25-24.5. New Orleans has covered, and you win the bet. If the full-time score is 24-17, and the line is instead New Orleans −7, then the bet is a push — neither side won, so the sportsbook will return you the full amount of your wager. If you want to lower your risk even further, you can consider a teaser. In a teaser, you can move the line by a pre-set margin — six points in American football — to increase the odds you’ll win, while still betting on multiple games. A Wong teaser is a special kind of teaser that is said to favor the gambler. Spread betting is a fun and exciting way to watch games. When teams are trying to win outright, instead of covering the spread, then it can be very stressful for the punter to cheer on one team or the other! When you start spread betting, look at some trends in your favorite sport to give yourself an idea of what might happen. For example, in the NFL, home teams usually fail to cover the spread, but some teams do better than others. Knowledge like this will quickly let you become a profitable bettor, with the help of betting-strategy.org. In the UK, spread betting also refers to totals bets, sometimes on statistics other than the final score, which we’ll cover in another article. Financial spread-betting is also popular in the UK. The mathematical analysis of spread betting is very complicated, so betting-strategy.org wants to give you as many tools to succeed and play your best game as we can. In sports like American football, spread betting is the most popular kind of betting. It’s also in common usage in every other sport, from tennis to badminton to football to baseball.
